We now see that Random Tens are threatened because Jonah Goldberg wants to play and, well, he's just ruining it for everybody just like he did when his mother would take him to birthday parties that he wasn't invited to and he would eat all the cake, open the presents, and then try to hump the pinata.

John G. Roberts Jr., a conservative protege of the late William H. Rehnquist, succeeded him Thursday and became the nation’s youngest chief justice in two centuries, winning support from more than three-fourths of the Senate after promising he would be no ideologue.

[...]

A crowd including seven of the eight sitting justices, Roberts’ parents, Rosemary and John Sr., children John and Josephine, Senate supporters and White House well-wishers erupted stood and applauded as Roberts kissed his wife and shook Stevens’ hand. The audience also included Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers, both of whom have been mentioned as candidates for O’Connor’s seat.

[...]

The only justice not at the White House was Antonin Scalia. He had a previous engagement that could not be broken, a court spokeswoman said. According to the Federalist Society Web site, he was leading a two-day seminar on the separation of powers in Avon, Colo.

I'm surprised that Scalia didn't issue a stay keeping Roberts from becoming the Chief Justice citing the irreparable damage that it does to his own ego.

Having spent the better part of the afternoon coming back from Santa Monica (one hour forty-five minutes there...three hours forty-five minutes back), the lovely and talented Casey was good enough to to contribute this picture, that she keeps on her desk, of Satchmo from about seven years and seventy pounds ago.

I see that the basset penis is again making an appearance and it's adorable as only a puppy penis can be. And maybe Tucker Carlson's...

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."

Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.

If you have the chance to see this show, don't pass it up. Three exceptional bands for one price which almost meets my three band standard of Pearl Jam/Nirvana/Red Hot Chili Peppers in '91. And way above Molly Hatchet/The Outlaws/Blue Oyster Cult from 197?.

Since I didn't do drugs or drink I really don't know how to explain that one... so don't ask me.

Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith, discloses in a new book that she gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal.

Smith did not share that detail with authorities at the time. But investigators said she came clean about the drugs when they interviewed her months later. They said they have no plans to charge her with drug possession.

In her book, "Unlikely Angel," released Tuesday, Smith says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord. She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, and she dug into her illegal stash of crystal meth instead.

Then she read to him from "The Purpose Driven Oh God I'm So Fuckin' Ripped You Wanna Go Get Slurpees Hey Turn It Up That Fucking Song Rocks I Haven't Slept In Two Days Life".

Smith, a 27-year-old widowed mother who gained widespread praise for her level-headedness, says the seven-hour hostage ordeal in March led to the realization that she was a drug addict, and she says she has not used drugs since the night before she was taken captive.

"If I did die, I wasn't going to heaven and say, `Oh, excuse me, God. Let me wipe my nose, because I just did some drugs before I got here,'" Smith told the Augusta Chronicle.

Because God won't know that she was a user and abuser since he mainly reads fiction or whatever Oprah says is really good these days.

Steve at NMMNB has more including links to Malkin and Noonan who got all misty in the knickers over the earlier story. Later they'll write articles blaming the MSM for not getting the story right the first time.

Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra..push over the cliff...you know what we do? Marty: Put it up to eleven. Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

La Famiglia Tbogg will be enjoying Happy FunJoy Family Night this evening with the Foo Fighters, Weezer, and the Kaiser Chiefs so you'll just have to occupy yourselves with some of the fine bloggers to your left (no...the other left) or possibly some porn, which I hear is available (yet hard to find) on the internets.

(Added): Kaiser Chiefs- I'd be surprised if they didn't get real big. Hard to pin down the influences, but I caught a whiff of XTC. They played a show later in the evening at a local bar and I had a chance to get on the guest list but passed because I need my beauty sleep. I'll kick myself later.Weezer- I've been going to concerts for over thirty years and I've almost seen'em all. Weezer is one of the best live bands I've ever seen, and I honestly wasn't expecting that.

Foo Fighters - Sometime between Weezer and the Foos a chimp must have played with the soundboard because the mix was so muddy that it sounded like Dave Grohl was singing through a tin can. Too bad. They played loud. Grohl screamed a lot and played ROCK STAR. If Kurt Cobain had seen him he would have blown his brains out...again.

Senator Bill Frist on Monday defended his sale of stock in his family's hospital company at the June peak in its price, saying he had first sought legal and ethical advice about divesting the shares two months earlier.

Mr. Frist, a Tennessee Republican who is considered a likely presidential candidate in 2008, also alluded to future considerations that played into the sale of the shares in the company, the hospital giant HCA.

"Looking ahead at my final years in the Senate and what might come next," Mr. Frist said, "I have for some time wanted to eliminate even the possibility of an appearance of a conflict by totally divesting."

A spokesman for Mr. Frist, the majority leader and brother of HCA's chairman emeritus, disclosed last week that he had received inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors about the sale, which was completed five days before the company announced disappointing results that sent the stock price down about 10 percent. (my emphasis)

I give it one "oh" face, Dick. You can't laugh at it and it doesn't make any sense

I have admitted many times that I don't get conservative humor. It's either hermetically grim and constricted, or it's all so painfully awkward in that sad bedraggled Mallard Fillmore way that you want to look away so they can't see the pity in your eyes. So you'll excuse me if I plead ignorance as to whether this post is supposed to funny or well, just kind of stupid. Okay, not 'kind of stupid'. Really stupid. Paste-eating stupid.

Oh wait. It's business humor which is usually only appreciated by administrative assistants who mentally convert all punchlines into "Jesus. What an asshole" while grinning maniacally and saying, "Good one, boss."

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

More than $7 trillion has been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson declared his "war on poverty" 40 years ago, with effectively zero impact on overall black poverty. Yet 40 years of failure doesn't seem to be enough to suggest to liberals, black and white, that their approach to poverty might be wrong.

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a 501c3 non-profit organization that provides national dialogue on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy.

Prior to her involvement in social activism, Star Parker was a single welfare mother in Los Angeles, California. After receiving Christ, Star returned to college, received a BS degree in marketing, and launched an urban Christian magazine.

As someone who has never fathered a child out of wedlock, never had a drug problem, and never had a drinking problem (which, I guess, is why I've never felt the need to use Christ as a crutch) I really wish these people would quit trying to give me advice about how to live my life.

Poor Michelle Malkin. She can never remember from one day to the next which guiding philosophy she is adopting. On 9/24 she writes:

I spent the afternoon at Sheehanapalooza in D.C. under overcast skies, in a haze of hemp-scented paranoia, steeped with fetid Bush hatred. Am uploading a bunch of photos of moonbats in action at my Flickr site. Here's a sample:

And then she offers a well-winnowed selection of pictures of various "moonbats" including this sneery comment under a picture of a young lady in pink:

A stylish member of Code Pink

...and this one under a picture of a kid who is probably between eight and ten:

Moonbat in training

Fast forward to 9/25 where she is shocked, shocked I tell you, when Bill Maher "slimes the Bushes":

What Bill Maher did to exploit the smear story on Friday night sunk to a new low.

Watch the entire segment at the liberal site, Crooks and Liars, and look at the gag photo Maher holds up of the First Lady.

Pay close attention to the audience's reaction. Surprisingly, even some of Maher's fans were shocked and apparently dismayed at the cheap shot. The gasps from the crowd are notable, but the laughter quickly rebounded and rolled along.

There's liberalism for you: So civil. So compassionate. Such sensitive champions of women and the weak.

With the passage of time, it has become apparent that most of the "evidence" on the basis of which the Democrats launched their hysterical post-Katrina attack on the Bush administration was wrong. As the facts come into focus, the dominant question that emerges is: how could the mainstream media have done such a poor job in reporting on Hurricane Katrina?

[...]

The media's enthusiastic mis-reporting of falsehood as fact seriously damaged the rescue effort:

Compass conceded that rumor had overtaken, and often crippled, authorities' response to reported lawlessness, sending badly needed resources to situations that turned out not to exist.

It's time for some accountability here. The conventional wisdom is that no one performed particularly well in the aftermath of Katrina--not local, state or federal authorities, and not considerable numbers of private citizens. But it now appears clear that the worst performance of all was turned in by the mainstream media. Congress should promptly investigate, and try to get to the bottom of the following questions:

* How did so many false rumors come to be reported as fact?* Do news outlets have any procedures in place to avoid this kind of mis-reporting? If so, why did their procedures fail so miserably?* To what extent were the false rumors honest mistakes, and to what extent were they deliberate fabrications?* To the extent that the false reports were deliberate, did the press pass them on through sheer negligence, or did some reporters participate in deliberate fabrication?* Did the widespread breakdown in accurate reporting stem only from a failure to follow proper journalistic standards, or did it also reflect a deliberate effort to damage the Bush administration by passing on unconfirmed rumors as fact?* In deciding what stories to report, did the news media consider the likelihood that passing on false rumors would damage the rescue effort?

Good questions, Rocketboy! Very nice. Well thought out. Very comprehensive....

Hey! I've got an idea! Let's apply these same questions to, say, the Bush Administration and the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other supporters of the invasion of Iraq.

* How did so many false rumors come to be reported as fact?* Do news outlets have any procedures in place to avoid this kind of mis-reporting? If so, why did their procedures fail so miserably?* To what extent were the false rumors honest mistakes, and to what extent were they deliberate fabrications?* To the extent that the false reports were deliberate, did the press pass them on through sheer negligence, or did some reporters participate in deliberate fabrication?* Did the widespread breakdown in accurate reporting stem only from a failure to follow proper journalistic standards, or did it also reflect a deliberate effort to damage genuflect before the Bush administration by passing on unconfirmed rumors as fact?* In deciding what stories to report, did the news media consider the likelihood that passing on false rumors would damage rescue effort America's credibility, economy, military readiness, and result in the deaths of 1900+ American soldiers?

Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about "alternatives" to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design.

[...]

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.

What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.

Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.

"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."

For Mrs. Hied, a meter reader, and her husband, Michael, an office manager for a local bus and transport company, the Dover school board's argument - that teaching intelligent design is a free-speech issue - has a strong appeal.

"I think we as Americans, regardless of our beliefs, should be able to freely access information, because people fought and died for our freedoms," Mrs. Hied said over a family dinner last week at their home, where the front door is decorated with a small bell and a plaque proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring."

Which, of course, has nothing to do with science. Science is not a democracy.

My daughter goes to a private Catholic high school and they discused ID last year. According to Casey, her teacher described it in a nutshell: it's crap. But then this is a high school that is proud of the fact the 98% of it's graduating seniors go to college so maybe they have ulterior motives...

"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."

Disassociative idiots, the lot of them. I just spent a week not talking to these folks (and God, I'm cranky), who were all, to a person, nice, fairly courteous, had terrible fashion sense and were stone stupid. They were almost completely incurious about the world and, instead of engaging in it, they actively sought out anodyne catchphrases in lieu of conversation. They may as well have worn bumper stickers on their asses.

God is an easy answer to the question "how did man become man?', but it's not a good one, unless we want to infantalize every bit of knowledge (which they do, because ultimately, if God is the answer for 'design' than She's the answer for everything else.) we as humans possess, so that these well-meaning fucktards can conflate Freedom of Speech with the scientific record.

It's the ludicrious thought process of fools like Mrs. Hied that must send teachers into raging alcoholism.

Her mindbending 'fairness' forces her to believe the following fallacies: That people fought wars and died to protect our freedom of speech (which war, exactly? I suppose Lenny Bruce died for our sins, but it wasn't exactly Iwo Jima.), that because people died for freedom of speech all speech is equally valuable and truthful, that because all speech is equally valuable and truthful, it should be taught (say, let's bring back that Green Cheese theory of the moon!) and that since this should be taught, it reaches the standard of 'freely accessed'.

I'm surprised that she can walk without falling over. And I'm sorry this sounds so elitist -- but I can't stand it anymore. And, in the interest of fairness, 95% of the speakers at the anti-war rally made me want to drain the mini-bar, they were so vapid. I'm really cranky.

In 2000 Nader managed to first fuck-over the Green Party by pretending to be their savior, and then he fucked over the country with his symbolic candidacy that paved the road for Bush/Cheney. To show up now and protest the war is like an arsonist wandering back to check out the fire engines.

And I don't want to hear about Gore's campaign or any of that bullshit noise. It was a close election and Nader didn't stand any more chance of winning an electoral vote than he would NBA Player of the Year. He used the Greens good name and shit all over it to feed his ego. What I fail to understand is how this man could attract a cult of personality when he clearly lacks the main ingredient.

Witness the nomination of Julie Myers as the new head of immigration and customs enforcement at the Homeland Security Department. Though the White House attacked the diplomat Joseph Wilson for nepotism because he undertook a single pro bono intelligence mission while his wife was at the C.I.A., it thought nothing of handing this huge job to a nepotistic twofer: Ms. Myers is the niece of Gen. Richard Myers and has just married the chief of staff for the homeland securitysecretary, Michael Chertoff. Her qualifications for running an agency with more than 20,000 employees and a $4 billion budget include serving as an associate counsel under Kenneth Starr; in that job, she helped mastermind the costly and doomed prosecution of Susan McDougal, and was outwitted at every turn by the defense lawyer Mark Geragos.

Ms. Myers is only the latest example of Mr. Chertoff's rolling the dice with Americans' safety during his brief tenure in Homeland Security. After the bombings in London in July, he vowed to maximize his department's "finite human and financial capital to attain the optimal state of preparedness." Yet the very same day, the president nominated Tracy Henke as Homeland Security's new executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Ms. Henke, a John Ashcroft political appointee at the Justice Department, has since been unmasked as an Enron-style spinner of numbers. As Eric Lichtblau of The Times reported in August, it was she who ordered the highly regarded nonpartisan head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Lawrence Greenfeld, to delete a reference to politically embarrassing data in a government press release for a report on racial profiling. When Mr. Greenfeld complained, he was demoted.

Imagine Ms. Henke, in her Homeland Security job, having sway over press releases about our disaster readiness. There is likely to be nothing but good news until it's too late. But if the hiring of the likes of Ms. Henke, Ms. Myers and Mr. Safavian is half of the equation in Enron governance, the other half is the punishing of veteran civil servants like Mr. Greenfeld for doing their jobs honestly. Even as it fills its ranks with Abramoff golf-junket partners, political flunkies and underemployed relatives, the administration silences those who, like Sherron Watkins at Enron, might blow the whistle on any Kozlowski or Ebbers or Rigas fleecing or betraying the taxpayers. Three weeks before Mr. Safavian's arrest, the Army Corps of Engineers demoted another procurement official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was a 20-year veteran in her field. Her crime was not obstructing justice but pursuing it by vehemently questioning irregularities in the awarding of some $7 billion worth of no-bid contracts in Iraq to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.

Ms. Greenhouse and Mr. Greenfeld are only two of the many whistle-blowers done in by this administration so far. (Congressman Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, lists nine on his Web site.) Even top government officials who are not whistle-blowers, merely truth-tellers, are axed. Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, was pushed out after he accurately projected the cost of the Iraq war at $100 billion to $200 billion. Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, was shunted aside after he accurately estimated the number of required troops ("several hundred thousand") for securing Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, who presented rosy scenarios of getting the job done with Iraqi oil income and low troop deployments, stayed on to bungle the war.

Whomever wins in 2008 will be lucky if the country is only described as a "fixer-upper". The looting of the treasury combined with the dismantling of oversight and protections is going to leave us looking like a burned-out crackhouse.

A new horrifying prisoner abuse scandal, this time revealed by a West Point officer and backed up by two sergeants.

Support for some of the allegations of abuse come from a sergeant of the 82nd Airborne who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch quotes him as saying that, "To 'F____ a PUC' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To 'smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

"On their day off people would show up all the time," the sergeant continues in the HRW report. "Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all U.S. soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the cook."

Artists are rarely moral heroes and should not expect to be, any more than plumbers or dog breeders are. Goya, being neither madman nor masochist, had no taste for martyrdom. But he sometimes was heroic, particularly in his conflicted relations with the last Bourbon monarch he served, the odious and arbitrarily cruel Fernando VII. His work asserted that men and women should be free from tyranny and superstition; that torture and, rape, despoliation, and massacre, those perennial props of power in both the civil and the religious arena, were intolerable: and that those who condoned or employed them were not to be trusted, no matter how seductive the bugle calls and the swearing of allegiance might seem. At fifteen, to find this voice - so finely wrought and yet so raw, public and yet strangely private - speaking to me with such insistence and urgency from a remote time and a country I'd never been to, of whose language I spoke not a word, was no small thing. It had the feeling of a message transmitted with terrible urgency, mouth to ear: this is the truth, you must know this, I have been through it. Or, as Goya scratched at the bottom of his copperplates in Los desastres de la guerra: "Yo lo vi," "I saw it." "It" was unbelievably strange, but the "yo" made it believable.

A former American soldier who served in Iraq and filed for conscientious objector status has given an extraordinary insight into the war's dehumanising effects ­ an insight that helps explain why the British and American public has turned sharply against the occupation.

On the eve of large anti-war demonstrations in Washington and London, Hart Viges has told how indiscriminate fire from US troops is likely to have killed an untold number of Iraqi civilians. Mr Viges, 29, said he was still haunted by the memories of what he experienced and urged President George Bush to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

"I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds," Mr Viges, who served with the 82nd Airborne Division, said during a presentation this week at American University in Washington. "In Baghdad, I had days that I don't want to remember. I try to forget," he added

The rare insight into the chaos of the combat ­ including an order to open fire on all taxis in the city of Samawa because it was believed Iraqi forces were using them for transport ­ comes as US support for the war in Iraq slumps to an all-time low. Polls suggest that 60 per cent now believe the war was wrong. Mr Bush's personal approval ratings are also at a record low.

[...]

Hart Viges' own journey into the chaos and violence of Iraq started on 11 September 2001. The day after he watched al- Qa'ida terrorists fly airliners into targets in New York and Washington he quit his job as a waiter in Seattle and signed up for the US Army.

Deployed to the Middle East in early 2003, he saw action in Baghdad and Fallujah, among other hot spots.

Despite his growing horror with what he was experiencing, it was only when he watched Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, that he decided to file for conscientious objector status. "I consider myself a Christian and I thought Jesus wasn't talking smack," he told the American-Statesman newspaper, in his current home of Austin, Texas.

And so it is that we return in grand style to America's Worst Mother who is just minutes away from giving birth to Muffaletta DuBois Gurdon, possibly through Megan's chest (ala Alien) which is certain to further traumatize the other Gurdonettes: Ravenna, Marquis de Sadie, Marfantasia, and Dijon.

As we check in on Meghan we find her heavy with child and homeschooling Dijon, teaching him how to conjugate (i.e. I biff, I have biffed, I have been boffed and now I need to crap this kid out):

The table is strewn with fine fat books (The Child’s History of the World by Virgil Hillyer, some Dorling Kindersley art and mythology volumes) and thinner, meaner ones (workbooks, chiefly), but right now Paris is engaged in a process known as squeezing blood from a stone.

“A capital,” he sighs, scrubbing out a lower-case “f” and starting over.

“And they always end with?”

“A period.“

Which reminds us that if Meghan had ended with a period about eight months ago she wouldn't be carrying around, as she puts it :" an antelope in my torso".

“Let’s see what you’ve done so far,” I say gently, reaching for Paris’s composition book. This is the most grueling part of his new home-schooled day, when he must extract a series of words from deep within himself, organize them into sentences, and commit them in passable cursive to the page. It’s been three weeks and his writing is undeniably improving — fatally wobbly lines daily grow more stout and distinct; short, jerky sentences are slowly giving way to longer, livelier ones — but it cannot be said that he takes pleasure in it. The subject of today’s composition is our family’s mad new enthusiasm for taekwondo, the Korean martial art. Biffing and kicking? Now that is something Paris enjoys.

“Oh my,” I laugh out loud. “This is good work, but I think we’d better fix some of the spelling.” In his careful script, Paris has ended one sentence with: “Fling Kike!”

“Definitely no flinging kikes,” I murmur, hastily erasing the offending phrase, and explaining, “the name of the studio is spelled F-l-y-i-n-g K-i-c-k.”

(i.e. I jew, she jews, we have all flung jews)

“Look, Paris,” Violet says, stepping away from the easel and pointing to a colorful feminine tableau. “Look at the belly-button showers.” She pronounces this ‘show-ers,’ as in those who show.

“Oh Violet, that’s gross!”

Violet nods. “I hope Molly doesn’t grow up to be a boyfriend/girlfriend/belly-button-showing kind of girl,” she says, returning to her work.

“Me, too,” he seconds, shaking his head with disgust.

(i.e. She ho, she has hoed, she's a big slutty belly-button-showing ho)

But in the midst of all of this conjugating (i.e. I conjugate, I have conjugated, I need a drink) "Granny" shows up in full Bob Livingston BDSM regalia, with a bit of discipline in mind:

And at some point Granny arrives — arrives, indeed, for a long-term stay — brandishing a fat paperback copy of “Nanny 911” and a pair of handcuffs. The sight of these objects makes me laugh nervously.

“They were good-bye presents from my work colleagues!” Granny cries, jangling the handcuffs in jovial warning at the children.

“Cool!” says Paris, automatically reaching for the shiny things. Violet and Phoebe jump up and down in place. Molly’s eyes narrow and she takes a small step away, separating herself from the herd.

Ravenna, of course, remembers that fateful night when she got up to get a drink of water and caught Mummy and Mr. Meghan playing the policeman and the nightcall nurse and how the white uniform dress made Mr. Meghan's ass look really big.

“So watch out!” Granny continues loudly. “There’s going to be order around here, or else!” I know she’s just having fun, I know this is just grandmotherly repartee; still, it is all I can do to keep from objecting that our household is plenty orderly without restraining devices or the intervention of fat TV nannies. Not to mention that, as ever in the breathless interval before a new baby arrives, the children’s unconscious anxieties are producing a bumper crop of nightmares,

See previous cop/nurse fantasy.

And it is true: Within Granny is pitching in on household tasks such as the bathing of children and the packing of hated lunchboxes with such zeal as to make her something like an angel to the heavily pregnant among us.

Did I say “heavily pregnant?” Ha. In the past two weeks, acquaintances have suddenly gone from exclaiming, “Oh, but you’re so tiny! Why when I was about to have a baby I was the size of a — “ to remarking ruefully, “Any day now, eh?” or grimly, “Still here, I see?”

On the whole I am able to meet these pleasantries with equanimity, or at least I was, until a well-intentioned friend e-mailed me with some advice he’d read once in a book about childbirth (written by a man who delivered his wife’s babies — at home) and had passed on previously to another expectant mother: “IMAGINE A FLOWER OPENING UP.”

(i.e. I episiotomy, I have episiotomied, I have kids with bowling-ball heads)

Argh! In a passion, I wrote back: “I am not surprised that the author was a man. That metaphor was told to me, too, before I had my first child, and I was so outraged by the falsehood, once I had actually delivered a baby, that I wanted to find the person who told me and punch them in the nose. It is no more true than saying that having your leg amputated is like being a dandelion, letting go of your fluff!”

As you can tell, dear reader, I may be immobile, but I’m ready to pop.

(i.e. I shoot, I have shot, I am ready to kill the next person who touches my abdomen)

In two weeks: Kids, Put the Placenta Down and Come Meet Your New Sister This Instant.

"Advise and consent"...Nope. Nothing here about not consenting. I'll be damned.

When not hustling up business for PajamabananaMedia, Roger Simon pulls out his handy pocket Constitution and points out that Russ Feingold is a good boy who colors inside the invisible lines:

Watching final speeches and voting for the Senate Judicary Committee hearings on the Roberts nomination, it was interesting to see who were thoughtful public servants and who were the partyline hacks. I was surprised to find my generally sensible senator Dianne Feinstein falling so definitively into the latter category. In fact I would characterize her performance as pathetic - she read the most banal imaginable text laden (or leaden) with hoary liberal shibboleths in a rote manner that convinced you she couldn't possibly believe a word she was saying. Whatever the cause - campaign contribution desperation, fear of her left flank - I think the woman made a fool of herself.

On the other hand, Russ Feingold, whose core political beliefs are far more liberal than Feinsteins, followed the Constitution and voted yes.

Your right to vote the way you wish is apparently limited by one of those penumbra thingies...

Meanwhile over at PajamaB-A-N-A-N-A we meet another shooting star who is going to set the MSM straight:

On our direction

It sounded interesting enough to me that when they put the call out for anyone to be involved, I said, 'Hey, it sounds like something worth doing.' I do think that somehow the blogosphere will end up taking up over from the mainstream media. To me it is sometimes sickening how the media behave. I felt this could offer an alternative.

Yes, by reading the mainstream media and then filtering it through a prism of social dysfunction, repression, and personal bias all dissonance and nuance will be removed making the reportage as soothing and concise as a Marmaduke cartoon. It helps to think of PajamaMedia as sort of a Media Cliff Notes as written by slow children, although that's probably not what it specifically says in the business plan.

So far the cast of PajamaMedia is starting to resemble a casting call for Crosstown Bus of The Damned.

Oprah Winfrey said yesterday that she was expanding her highly influential television book club to include the works of contemporary authors, reversing a policy of choosing only classic novels and once again offering authors and their publishers the hope of huge sales resulting from her picks.

"I wanted to open the door and broaden the field," Ms. Winfrey said in an interview. "That allows me the opportunity to do what I like to do most, which is sit and talk to authors about their work. It's kind of hard to do that when they're dead."

As her first selection under the new criteria, Ms. Winfrey chose "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey, a harrowing 2003 memoir about the author's stay in a treatment center to address his alcoholism and drug addiction.

From 1996 to 2002, a book's selection for Oprah's Book Club typically resulted in sales of more than a million copies, a boon to authors and publishers in a business where selling 20,000 copies of a literary novel is considered a success. Her picks drew readers both to well-regarded authors like Toni Morrison and to relative unknowns like Wally Lamb and Anita Shreve.

Ms. Winfrey abandoned the book club in 2002 but restarted it a year later in a different form, choosing only classic novels, mostly by authors long dead. While sales soared for some of her classic picks, like "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck, others did not reach expectations, most notably this summer's selection of three novels by William Faulkner.

In an interview, Ms. Winfrey, who does not profit from the sales of the books she chooses, acknowledged that some recent selections did not draw the enthusiasm of some of her early ones. In a break with the past, no shows this summer were devoted to the Faulkner books; rather, she had extensive materials available on her Internet site (www.oprah.com).

Okay. Let's stop right here. Those of us not in thrall of Oprah remember that one of the main reasons that the book club went on hiatus was when Jonathan Franzen didn't jump when Oprah said "jump" after she had chosen The Corrections, something writer Edward Wyatt doesn't mention until about the fifteenth paragraph:

When she stopped choosing contemporary books, Ms. Winfrey said she was struggling to find enough titles that she felt compelled to share with her viewers, a statement that angered many publishers. But the change also followed by a few months a highly public quarrel with Jonathan Franzen, whose novel "The Corrections" was chosen by Ms. Winfrey in September 2001.

After Mr. Franzen made public comments suggesting that her choices were unsophisticated and appealed mainly to women, she revoked an invitation for him to appear on her show.

Ms. Winfrey dismissed the notion that his remarks influenced her decision to drop the book club. "Jonathan Franzen was not even a blip on the radar screen of my life," she said. "I didn't think one day about it."

To which we say, "bullshit" (or "malarkey" if you're a virgin). Frantzen made Oprah look bad by taking a swipe at her readers and Oprah was humiliated. Oh sure, not as humiliated as when a Hermès shopgirl turned her snooty nose up at Oprah in front of her friends, but more humiliated than the time when she was riding Steadman reverse-cowgirl, lost her balance, and fell off and crushed one of the dogs. That was pretty bad too.

I appreciate the fact that Oprah is getting her viewers to read as opposed to say, sitting around the house watching people alternately whine and then congratulate themselves on daytime TV, but Oprah's selections pretty much ran the gamut from dysfunctional families to...more dysfunctional families, proving that at least she knows her you-go-girl demographic. For a few authors, it's a goldrush and good for them, but they do run the risk of becoming an Oprah writer instead of following their own muse.

Then there is the Oprah "O" on the cover that allows her readers to remember which book they are supposed to pick up what with having that TV-generation short attention span and all. More than a few times I've heard people in bookstores ask clerks if they have a non-Oprah edition, which I'm assuming is because they either don't to look like an Oprah-bot or they've got that coolness thing going (and here I will raise my hand. When I bought my copy of The Corrections it had already mutated into the Oprah edition)

Some of her choices have been inspired (reaching back for Song of Solomon, House of Sand and Fog) and some have been, 'feh' (I Know This Much Is True, White Oleander, Stones From The River) and still others were bold but maybe a bit of a stretch such as One Hundred Years of Solitude. By the way, since she is looking for living authors, how did I miss the Gabriel Garcia Marquez episode?

And so Oprah leaps into the fray again with yet more dysfunction and her fans will eat it up. Next month, who knows? But we're pretty sure she won't be picking this one.

Antiwar groups are using a $1 million ad campaign and a demonstration they say will attract 100,000 people to try to re-energize their movement and pressure the Bush administration to bring troops home from Iraq.

[...]

Bush did not plan to be in Washington on Saturday, but he will have support on the streets. The groups FreeRepublic.com and Protest Warrior plan their own demonstration on Saturday, with hundreds expected to join in.

“We made a vow after Sept. 11 that we would not allow the anti-American left to do to us this time what they did during Vietnam, which was wear down the morale of the American,” FreeRepublic spokesman Kristinn Taylor said.

We weren't around when Mr. Peggy Noonan walked out on the loon, but after reading this we can only imagine the bitter recriminations, the bile, the unhinged frothing hatred. Of course, the only thing that can bring it on these days (besides reliving the day they pulled Elian from her sweaty grasp) is an attack on the sainted daddy Ronnie:

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor."

[...]

George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce? The great Bush spending spree is about an arguably shrewd but ultimately unhelpful reading of history, domestic politics, Iraq and, I believe, vanity.

[...]

Iraq: Mr. Bush decided long ago--I suspect on Sept. 12, 2001--that he would allow no secondary or tertiary issue to get in the way of the national unity needed to forge the war on terror. So no fighting with Congress over who put the pork in the pan. Cook it, eat it, go on to face the world arm in arm.

As for vanity, the president's aides sometimes seem to see themselves as The New Conservatives, a brave band of brothers who care about the poor, unlike those nasty, crabbed, cheapskate conservatives of an older, less enlightened era.

[...]

A lot of Bush supporters assumed the president would get serious about spending in his second term. With the highway bill he showed we misread his intentions.

Wow. What brought this on? I mean, Peggy's not GOING TOBE IGNORED!

The administration, in answering charges of profligate spending, has taken, interestingly, to slighting old conservative hero Ronald Reagan. This week it was the e-mail of a high White House aide informing us that Ronald Reagan spent tons of money bailing out the banks in the savings-and-loan scandal. This was startling information to Reaganites who remembered it was a fellow named George H.W. Bush who did that. Last month it was the president who blandly seemed to suggest that Reagan cut and ran after the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon.

Poor Reagan. If only he'd been strong he could have been a good president.

Before that, Mr. Mehlman was knocking previous generations of Republican leaders who just weren't as progressive as George W. Bush on race relations. I'm sure the administration would think to criticize the leadership of Bill Clinton if they weren't so busy having jolly mind-melds with him on Katrina relief. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, is using his new closeness with the administration to add an edge of authority to his slams on Bush. That's a pol who knows how to do it.

At any rate, Republican officials start diminishing Ronald Reagan, it is a bad sign about where they are psychologically. In the White House of George H.W. Bush they called the Reagan administration "the pre-Bush era." See where it got them.

Oooooo. Snap!

First and foremost Mr. Bush has abandoned all rhetorical ground. He never even speaks of high spending. He doesn't argue against it, and he doesn't make the moral case against it. When forced to spend, Reagan didn't like it, and he said so. He also tried to cut. Mr. Bush seems to like it and doesn't try to cut. He doesn't warn that endless high spending can leave a nation tapped out and future generations hemmed in. In abandoning this ground Bush has abandoned a great deal--including a primary argument of conservatism and a primary reason for voting Republican. And who will fill this rhetorical vacuum? Hillary Clinton. She knows an opening when she sees one, and knows her base won't believe her when she decries waste.

Second, Mr. Bush seems not to be noticing that once government spending reaches a new high level it is very hard to get it down, even a little, ever. So a decision to raise spending now is in effect a decision to raise spending forever.

Third, Mr. Bush seems not to be operating as if he knows the difficulties--the impossibility, really--of spending wisely from the federal level. Here is a secret we all should know: It is really not possible for a big federal government based in Washington to spend completely wisely, constructively and helpfully, and with a sense of personal responsibility. What is possible is to write the check. After that? In New Jersey they took federal Homeland Security funds and bought garbage trucks. FEMA was a hack-stack.

The one time a Homeland Security Department official spoke to me about that crucial new agency's efforts, she talked mostly about a memoir she was writing about a selfless HS official who tries to balance the demands of motherhood against the needs of a great nation. When she finally asked for advice on homeland security, I told her that her department's Web page is nothing but an advertisement for how great the department is, and since some people might actually turn to the site for help if their city is nuked it might be nice to offer survival hints. She took notes and nodded. It alarmed me that they needed to be told the obvious. But it didn't surprise me.

Is it me or is anyone else alarmed that someone from the Homeland Security Department would ask Peggy Noonan for advice.? Next thing we know, we'll all be sitting on our roofs with the waters lapping at our tushes, clutching a Bible in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other while waiting for the Sacred Dolphins of the Apocalypse to show up and carry us to safety.

At a conservative gathering this summer the talk turned to high spending. An intelligent young journalist observed that we shouldn't be surprised at Mr. Bush's spending, he ran from the beginning as a "compassionate conservative." The journalist noted that he'd never liked that phrase, that most conservatives he knew had disliked it, and I agreed. But conservatives understood Mr. Bush's thinking: they knew he was trying to signal to those voters who did not assume that conservatism held within it sympathy and regard for human beings, in fact springs from that sympathy and regard.

So basically when George Bush said that he loved us and would never leave us and that he would pull out before he came...well, although he meant well, he lied. Men!

I never understood compassionate conservatism to mean, and I don't know anyone who understood it to mean, a return to the pork-laden legislation of the 1970s. We did not understand it to mean never vetoing a spending bill. We did not understand it to mean a historic level of spending. We did not understand it to be a step back toward old ways that were bad ways.

Lies, lies, and more lies.

Here are some questions for conservative and Republicans. In answering them, they will be defining their future party.

If we are going to spend like the romantics and operators of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society;

If we are going to thereby change the very meaning and nature of conservatism;

If we are going to increase spending and the debt every year;

If we are going to become a movement that supports big government and a party whose unspoken motto is "Whatever it takes";

If all these things, shouldn't we perhaps at least discuss it? Shouldn't we be talking about it? Shouldn't our senators, congressmen and governors who wish to lead in the future come forward to take a stand?

And shouldn't the Bush administration seriously address these questions, share more of their thinking, assumptions and philosophy?

So you see, we can talk out our problems and then you won't have to leave me, because we can make it work if we can just communicate, and I know that you really love me and I'll even do all of those things in the bedroom that I'm really good at, even though they disgust me, if you'll just stay and make it like it was...

THINKING OUT LOUD ON GAYS IN THE SEMINARY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]Banning chaste gay men from the priesthood seems like a stop-gap emergency move that concedes that some seminaries are just out of control. So a broad brush line is drawn, for better or for worse. It seems like the kind of thing that if it were going to be done, should have been done when the scandals broke, scandals that made clear what some already had a feel for--that, in fact, some seminaries are out of control. But banning gay men from the priesthood seems like it should be only a shortterm thing. Like proposing a moritoriam (sic) on immigration while getting a handle on enforcement. Same with the seminaries, in my quick laywoman's view. Clean house, teach the right things. Shape up. Then go back to taking the best men, whomever they are. If you're a good man who truly vows to be chaste, you will be that straight or not. It's the no-tolerance for abuse that is key and a complete committment to teaching the basics (and enforcing them)--a road all dioceses don't quite seem to be on yet.

First go read what jane has to say about the Porn Patrol. Go on. I'll wait...

(hmmm hmm hmm hmmm Yeah My mind's such a sweet thing... I wanna do everything ...What a beautiful feeling ...Crimson and clover ...Over and over ...Crimson and clover, over and over ...Crimson and clover, over and ov--)

Okay, You're back. Where was I? Oh yeah.

Now let's jump to The Virgin Ben whom I will guarantee you has seen more porn in his twenty-two years than I have in my fifty:

The "objective" reporter for the Washington Post, Barton Gellman, promptly sought out FBI agents to critique the new program. "I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one FBI agent. "We must not need any more resources for espionage." "Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves," guffawed another. "It's a running joke among us," chuckled a national security analyst.

The jocularity of these agents is rather disturbing. Back in 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese III declared that "it is still the case that the production of pornographic materials is a practice and a business that remains substantially 'underground.'" Today, FBI agents joke about even bothering to police production and distribution of pornography.

Of course, it is pure malarkey for FBI agents to complain that policing porn takes valuable resources from the war on terrorism.

Before we get to our point, I want to ask: "How many 22 year-olds do yo know who use the words 'malarkey' and 'jocularity'? Yeah. That's what I thought too.

Back to VBen:

Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it. It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide -- as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?(my emphasis)

Our first concern should be: doesn't anyone at Townhall edit these things? I mean I can imagine the fresh hell that exists for anyone who has to read VBen, Doug Giles, and Mike Adams each and every week and the psychic trauma that looms before them as they hit the 'publish' button. But Jesus, that just doesn't make any sense.

So our second concern should be whether they've lowered the standards at Harvard Law. I mean, is there another Harvard Law like in Wyoming or something? Maybe Harvard Law and Frozen Yogurt Shoppe down on Wabash and Third? Because I don't know how Ben managed to pull off the LSAT.

Then again one of my neighbors has a degree in economics from Harvard and he's a fucking tool. And not a fucking tool of the porn variety. You know... the good kind?

It was an interesting night around Casa TBogg this evening. Being the good parents that we are, the knowledgeable and opinionated Mrs tbogg and I were giving the lovely and talented Casey a hand with her homework, which consisted of a paper that she had to do on Arthur Miller's The Crucible; a rite of high school that it seems everyone must observe. In a flurry of conversation we covered Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, the Hollywood blacklist, Roy Cohn, Joseph Welch, Edward R. Murrow (and the upcoming George Clooney movie), Manzanar, Strawberry Days, Richard Jewell, 9/11, Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Murrah building, and the fact that Reese Witherspoon is cute as a button. Cruel Intentions was on the TV while we were talking...and she really is cute as a button.

Mainly we talked about the pack mentality that drives humans to track down "the other" and destroy them because we are ignorant, fearful, and cannot abide that which is different from our tribe du jour.

Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church.

The official, said the question was not "if it will be published, but when," referring to the new ruling about homosexuality in Catholic seminaries, a topic that has stirred much recent rumor and worry in the church. The official, who has authoritative knowledge of the new rules, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the church's policy of not commenting on unpublished reports.

He said that while Pope had not yet signed the document, it would probably be released in the next six weeks.

In addition to the new document, which will apply to the church worldwide, Vatican investigators have been instructed to visit each of the 229 seminaries in the United States.

[...]

Although work on the document began years ago under Pope John Paul II, who died in April, its release will be a defining act in the young papacy of Benedict, a conservative who said last spring that there was a need to "purify" the church after the deeply damaging sex scandals of the last several years.

The church official said the ban would pertain only to candidates for the priesthood, not to those already ordained. He also said the document did not represent any theological shift for the church, whose catechism considers homosexuality "objectively disordered."

Although the document has not been released, hints of what it will say are already drawing praise from some Catholics, who contend that such a move is necessary to restore the church's credibility and who note that church teaching bars homosexuals, active or not, from the priesthood.

Other Catholics say, though, that the test should be celibacy, not innate sexuality, and they predict resignations from the priesthood that can worsen the church's deep shortage of clergy.

"I'm hearing that some men will choose to leave, because if they don't, it would be like living a lie," said the Rev. Robert Silva, president of the American National Federation of Priests' Councils, who opposes a ban because it would be "extremely hurtful" to chaste gay priests who are serving the church.

But the church official who discussed the expected new rules said the document called for barring even celibate men who considered themselves homosexual because of what he contended were the specific temptations of seminaries.

"The difference is in the special atmosphere of the seminary," he said. "In the seminary, you are surrounded by males, not females."

The issue of homosexuality in the priesthood and seminaries has long been a difficult one, which the Vatican appears to be addressing, particularly in the United States, on two apparently connected fronts.

The visits to the American seminaries cover a wide range of concerns, but among those the investigators will be looking for is "evidence of homosexuality" and whether seminarians are being properly prepared to live celibately. Both the document and the investigation come under the authority of the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education.

Now first let me say that the Catholic Church is completely entitled to do as it wishes since it's their church and they can inquisition if they want to. As a former Catholic school boy who has fallen so far away from the church that I might as well be in the Mariana Trench with a next stop in hell, I'm can't say that I'm disappointed or surprised at the church's actions under Pope Benedict XVI. I think we all saw this coming. But I do think that the church is taking one more step toward becoming a secondary religion.

Faced with a shortage of priests, I can't fathom chasing away someone who is so devout that they would hide away their true self and their desires in order to give themselves over to a God that they wish to serve. Theology aside, that's just stupid. Who has given up more than a man who would deny his very essence in order to serve a church that finds him pitiable if not contemptible?

But what is contemptible is that this order is coming down from the man who played Hide the Priest with one of those caught playing Hide the Salami with the altar boys:

A trusted ally of Pope John Paul II has been accused of sexually abusing boys a half-century ago at an elite seminary for the Catholic Church.

The alleged victims say the Vatican knew of the allegations against Father Marcial Maciel and chose not to pursue them.

In fact, the pope has continued to praise 82-year-old Maciel, a Mexico native, as an effective leader of Catholic youth, despite detailed allegations sent to the Vatican four years ago saying the man was also a long-time pedophile.

Maciel denies the charges and said the men made them up only after leaving the Legion of Christ.

Maciel is the founder of the little-known but well-connected and well-financed Legion of Christ which has raised millions of dollars for the Church. Operating in the United States and 19 other countries, the Legion of Christ recruits boys as young as 10 years old to leave their families and follow a rigorous course of study to become priests.

"I think Father Maciel is one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church today and also arguably the most mysterious," said Jason Berry, author of Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children.

[...]

Lennon said Maciel is a master of Vatican politics: "He's worked with several popes, knows the inner workings, knows monsignors, knows cardinals, knows maybe the men who are really in power, knows that so well, so well."

Then, four years ago, some of the men tried a last ditch effort, taking the unusual step of filing a lawsuit in the Vatican's secretive court, seeking Maciel's excommunication.

Once again they laid out their evidence, but it was another futile effort — an effort the men say was blocked by one of the most powerful cardinals in the Vatican.

The accusers say Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican office to safeguard the faith and the morals of the church, quietly made the lawsuit go away and shelved it. There was no investigation and the accusers weren't asked a single question or asked for a statement.

He was appointed by the pope to investigate the entire sex abuse scandal in the church in recent days. But when approached by ABCNEWS in Rome last week with questions of allegations against Maciel, Ratzinger became visibly upset and actually slapped this reporter's hand.

"Come to me when the moment is given," Ratzinger told ABCNEWS, "not yet."

"Cardinal Ratzinger is sheltering Maciel, protecting him," said Berry, who expressed concerns that no response was being given to the allegations against the man charged with sex abuse. "These men knelt and kissed the ring of Cardinal Ratzinger when they filed the case in Rome. And a year-and-a-half later, he takes those accusations and aborts them, just stuffs them."

One needn't be a Catholic to ask the obvious question: Who is the bigger sinner? The chaste supplicant or the rape enabler?

The government wants to quit forcing companies to report small releases of toxic pollutants and allow them to submit reports on their pollution less frequently

[...]

EPA said it also plans to ask Congress for permission to require the accounting every other year instead of annually. The EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory began under a 1986 community right-to-know law. The first year the change could be possible, if Congress agreed, would be 2008.

"We certainly recognize there will be concerns moving to every other year," said Kimberly Nelson, EPA's assistant administrator for environmental information. "Every community will still have the same information about the types of toxic releases. They just won't have some of the details in terms of how that particular substance was managed or released."

Independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont called the proposal "a frontal assault" on one of the nation's most successful environmental laws.

And it's not like the chemical companies were crying about the burden of reporting:

Some big chemical companies said complying with the annual toxic inventory is not a problem for them.

"We are so in compliance it's not funny," Andrew Liveris, president of The Dow Chemical Company, told the AP. "We've adjusted to it many years ago."

So this is just Christmas come early.

And there is nothing like have an accidental toxic spill and not telling people the "details" until a year or two after the fact. Who knew that the "Protection" in the EPA's name meant protecting the polluters or at least their profits.

But maybe someone around here knows the answer to this. Have Democrats ever voted in significant numbers against a judge who was too extreme on the left? Leahy claims that he's drawn the line in the past against activist and extremist judges. Were there any liberals judges who met that test or are extremist judges only conservative? Schumer regularly says he can vote for anybody in the "mainstream." Are liberal judges ever out of the mainstream? (I know Schumer hasn't been around long enough, but you get the larger point). Just curious.

Update: Ramesh reminds me that Frederica Massiah-Jackson had her name pulled because even Dems couldn't support her (under Clinton). Is that the whole list?

For the record we've been pardoning Jonah's ignorance for far too long....

Or maybe Rather was happiest with the bogus death count estimate of 10,000 that the MSM put forth. I'm partial to this one because it springs, in part, from a central fallacy of the leftism of the MSM and others -- that people have no capacity to act without the government's help. The intitial impact of the storm could not have caused anything like 10,000 deaths, nor was this the impression the MSM wanted to convey. The estimate assumed instead that, with government not functioning, a substantial number of residents who did not evacuate the city lacked the intiative to move to higher ground (or to the Superdome, as they were told to) as the water level rose, and the decency to help the incapacitated do so. In effect the estimate assumed that a large number of residents lacked the sense, as the old saying goes, "to come in out of the rain." Only a liberal (think Bill Clinton, for example) would have such a low regard for the ability of humans to engage in minimal self-help. And, given the demographics of New Orleans, it would also help for the liberal to be a racist.

And she didn't even use the lube of human kindness...Oprah took her pound of flesh from me. Like she needs another pound of anything...

This afternoon I was complaining (whining, kvetching) to Jane at firedoglake that there wasn't anything that was catching my eye to write about these past few days. It's all so...wonkish. But then Jane yelled "thar she blows" and we had us an Oprah breaching and I once again had a purpose in life.

Now we all remember back in June when Oprah got her lacey delicates (which Steadman has to rinse by hand, by the way) in a snarl because she was denied entrance to an Hermes store because she was lateblack:

Whether Oprah Winfrey was turned away from a bit of after-hours shopping in Paris because of a racist employee or a special event, news of the confrontation outside a luxury store has evoked empathy and anger from many American minorities.

[...]

The incident occurred when Winfrey stopped by Hermes on June 14 to buy a watch minutes after the boutique closed. Though she and three friends said they saw shoppers inside, neither a sales clerk nor manager would let them in.

Winfrey believes the store's staff had identified her, according to a spokeswoman from Harpo Production Inc., her company. Winfrey's friend, Gayle King, who was there, told Entertainment Tonight, "Oprah describes it as 'one of the most humiliating moments of her life.'" Harpo says Winfrey plans to discuss the incident in the context of race relations on her show this fall.

And true to her word, Oprah had her thugs drag Robert Chavez, the chief executive officer of Hermès USA, down to her show by his balls to plead heresy. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't pretty:

Oprah Winfrey is not a diva. At all. No way. She is so adamant on that point that she brought the head of Hermès USA onto her talk show yesterday to admit it and apologize in front of a national audience.

"I would like to say we're really sorry," Robert Chavez, the chief executive officer of Hermès USA, said contritely. "You did meet up with one very, very rigid staff person."

The Hermès incident was one of the more florid tabloid stories of the summer: Ms. Winfrey, one of the wealthiest and most famous women in the nation, was turned away from the Hermès flagship store on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré at closing time. That kind of resounding "non" rang a bell with anyone who has tried to argue with a Parisian salesperson. But many people also interpreted the rebuff as racism, arguing that Ms. Winfrey would have been treated better had she been white. (Simpler souls merely relished the prospect that someone as famous as Ms. Winfrey would be denied anything, ever.)

But Ms. Winfrey seemed most bothered that people assumed she was irate because she had been denied a chance to shop. "Shame on anybody for thinking that I was upset for not being able to get into a clothes store and buy a purse," she said. "Please."

Okay. Let's stop here and once again point out that the store was closed. C-L-O-S-E-D. And Oprah was with her friends and suddenly she wasn't the most powerful woman in the world because she couldn't get a common shopgirl to throw open the gates of paradise for her. So "please" my ass.

Instead, she explained that the rudeness of one saleswoman had stung deep. "Anybody who has been snubbed because you were not chic enough, or not thin enough, or not the right class, or the right color or whatever, I don't know what it was, you know that it is totally humiliating."

Leave it to someone being the denied the right to purchase expensive frou-frou tchotckes to play the frump/body image/class/race cards. But, since Oprah was humiliated, well, someones ass has got to pay! (Cue Steadman whimpering under the bed).

Most of all, she said, she was hurt again when the Hermès company apologized in private, then released a statement that she said implied that "I was some diva trying to get in when the store was closed." Ms. Winfrey explained that some shoppers were still in the store, and that she argued with the sales personnel only because a few members of her entourage had their hearts set on going in.

Ms. Winfrey turned to Mr. Chavez and requested a public apology. "Tell the people what you told me."

Say it! Say it, bitch!

Power is a wonderful thing, particularly when it can be used to punish a haughty French salesperson - or one of France's most famous luxury goods companies. And it is not surprising that Mr. Chavez agreed to a televised walk of shame to make amends. After Ms. Winfrey discussed on a 1996 show whether mad cow disease could affect American beef, Texas cattlemen sued her, claiming that she had caused the price of beef futures to plummet. She won the case in 1998.

Ms. Winfrey was magnanimous in return, assuring Mr. Chavez that "you really did come correct." And while she did not distribute Hermès scarves to her studio audience, she did lift the shopping fatwa, urging her fans to go ahead and buy a Birkin bag.

Would a diva do that? Certainly not.

So you see, the moral of our story is that it is wrong to deny anything to a black woman worth in excess of $1.1 billion, but it is a righteous act of "sticking it to the man" (especially a 'frenchified' man according to Alessandra Stanley) by forcing him to criticize and humiliate one of his employees on national TV while acting like a beaten dog.

Somewhere tonight Steadman Graham is smiling although he better not let Oprah catch him or she's going to give him such a smack...